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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

*Blitz + Giveaway & Excerpt* Misplaced by Lee Murray

Accepted Readers,Today I have a blitz + giveaway + excerpt for you! Misplaced by Lee Murray falls into the new adult/mystery genres and sounds like edge- of -your- seat read. I am a huge fan of missing person stories and the mysteries that surround them.

In Misplaced a teenager's mom goes missing and when the leads in the case go cold; his life begins to fall apart. I wouldn't want to ever be in this situation and I just know this will be a heart-breaking story, BUT I still want to read it. Between the blurb and excerpt, I became hooked. I hope you feel the same way after reading the excerpt and blurb! If you do, make sure to enter the giveaway below to win your own copy of Misplaced!

*Note*

I
am a bit late on posting this blitz, it didn't post when I had
scheduled it to. I was out of town and unfortunately had very bad
internet reception where I was. I just got home and wasn't able to post
this until now. My apologizes.

Excerpt One:

The make-up girl has a silver nose ring and hair streaked psychedelic
orange.

‘Almost done,’ the girl says, puffing his face with powder. She has bony
knuckles like cauliflower stalks. Holding his breath, Adam wills himself not to
fidget as she deals to the fresh eruption of zits on his forehead. Right now, a
few spots are the least of his worries.

‘There, that’s put some colour in your cheeks.’

Adam opens his eyes, stares at the mirror, and doesn’t say anything. Even
with the powder, he’s as pale as Colgate. There’s fuzz on his chin and dark
bags under his eyes. He looks like a druggie, a metal-head on a bender.

The Powder Puff girl selects a lipstick from a tray which, held
vertically, could be a Connect Four player board.

Resolution Red.

With a practised twist, she pushes up the tube.

‘Pucker up, now,’ she coaxes. ‘Give me your sexiest pout, the one the
girls love.’ But Adam clamps his mouth shut, pursing his lips in a thin line,
and shakes his head. No lipstick. This isn’t an audition for American Idol.

‘But...’ The Powder Puff girl puts on a pout of her own.

‘No!’ he says, with more vehemence than is warranted.

The girl shrugs, rolls her eyes. ‘Whatever.’ She packs up her Connect
Four box and leaves him there.

‘One minute, people!’ the floor manager screams. Through the scramble of
movement, Adam is aware of Dad, shuffling about on the spot off to the side of
the make-shift set, a man out of his comfort zone. Six days a week, Dad’s
natural habitat is Creighton Cars, the yard that he runs. On Sundays he mows
the lawns, then slumps in front of the telly, cold beer in hand, watching
whatever sport happens to be on.

Adam notices that Dad’s tugging
his earlobe again. Dad always does that when he’s out of sorts. It’s a good
thing the clients haven’t cottoned on or he’d never sell any cars. Lately, he’s
pulled that lobe so often it’s a wonder he isn’t mistaken for a tribesman from
Borneo.

Not that Adam isn’t uncomfortable. He wishes it hadn’t come to this. The
thing is, the news people insisted a public appeal could make a difference.
They said it’d made a difference in other cases. But Dad couldn’t face it, so
Adam had agreed to do it instead. At this point Adam would agree to car surf
down Auckland’s Queen Street in the wrong direction at rush hour, if there was
a chance it would make a difference.

Anyway, it’s better Adam does it because, being younger than Dad, he’ll
make the biggest impact, apparently. Adam knows this because he heard the
camera crew chatting. They’d started off saying how Adam and Dad’s story was
made for television, the kind of story that won awards. Then one of them said
it was a bummer that Adam was seventeen. That’s when the guy holding the boom
said, in these kind of cases, nothing tops a 7-year-old girl, especially a
little blondie with dimples.

Maybe this is how his life will be from now on. People shushing each
other or looking away. Feeling sorry for him.

‘Adam? We’re ready for you.’ The floor manager speaks quietly. Adam’s
grateful. Right now he feels like the entire cast of Lost, like something awful
is about to happen. Maybe it already has, maybe he’s living in a parallel
universe and none of this is real, but whatever it is, Adam doesn’t get any of
it. He gets to his feet and allows the floor manager to direct him to the
lectern. Placing both hands on either side of the lectern, Adam steadies
himself.

This has to work. Please, let this work. Please.

But Adam knows that even if it does, nothing will be quite the same.

‘In 5... 4... 3...’ The floor manager holds up two fingers, then one...

The microphone makes a soft buzz as it’s switched on. Adam pauses,
marvelling at how they actually do that, the holding up the finger thing.

Oh shit.

He’s on national television. His face spreads with warmth: the
nasty-but-nice feeling you get when you pee in the sea. Great. His face will be
red and blotchy now. He inhales deeply.

Swallows.

Stares directly at the camera lens.

What if this is the last time he ever speaks to her?

‘Mum... Mum, if you’re out there, if you can hear this, please, please
call and let us know you’re all right. Whatever’s wrong, Dad and me, we’re
worried. Please, Mum, just come home...’

One
evening, Adam’s mum pops out for the milk and doesn’t come back,
launching a frantic nationwide search. Yet after weeks with no leads,
the television crews drift away, the police start asking hairy
questions, and Adam’s dad starts seeing someone else. Adam’s life is
falling apart. But then he meets Skye, who it seems has misplaced a
parent too, and things start to look up. That is, until a body is
found...

Lee Murray is a full-time writer and editor with masters degrees in
science and management. Lee wrote Misplaced after a friend, Florence,
went missing from her home in France in 2003. Sadly, Florence is still
missing. Lee lives in Tauranga, New Zealand with her husband and their
two teenaged children.